Not long had my bus which I have now got running sweet (thanks to help and advice from you lot) and it drives nice but crunches into 3rd, no matter whether you are coming from 2nd or 4th. If you double-de-clutch going from 2nd you can avoid the crunch, but no way you can avoid it when changing down from 4th to 3rd. So, I assumed that the 3rd syncro was knackered. Got hold of the prev owner and he says it was sweet when he last used it a year ago. It then sat on someones drive unused for some months and it then went to the garage for the MOT. The garage then got it MOT's but said they couldn;t get it into gear at all as the clutch had 'disintegrated and turned to dust'. They fitted a new clutch & I bought it and had it trailered home as the engine was not running right (the garage were not VW experts) So, could the gearbox develop this fault whilst sat on the drive unused, or could it be something to do with the fitting of the clutch. I have had the gearbox oil drained and refilled, and the clutch pedal has about 1 inch of free play. Selects all gears fine and no crunches except 3rd. Didn't want to go to the trouble of replacing the gearbox if the fault could be something to do with the clutch. Cheers peeps.
Try bringing the pedal free travel down to between 10 to 20mm. If the travel is erring on the generous side of an inch it maybe too much as the setting for a 1972 should be 10 to 20mm rather than the later figure of a maximum of 25mm.
As fritt says, I'd reduce the free play in your pedal/cable as a starting point, before disembowelling the box. 10mm sounds good. If there's too much play, the clutch may not disengage properly, the input shaft keeps turning even with the clutch down, and crunchy noises result.
Might seem obvious, but have you tried adjusting/moving the plate below the stick?...... Also the nylon bushes along the selector rod can wear........
had a quick look under the bus today and there is quite a bit of free play in the cable - the free play in the pedal looks more like 40mm to me, so I am being optimistic & hoping that this could be the reason for the crunch into 3rd. Will get it up on blocks & screw the adjustment nut up a few turns when the snow clears. Also, as it is a new clutch, would that mean that there will be a lot of meat on the plate, so the pedal will have to move further to disengage the clutch than if it was worn down? Or am I just talking cr@p ?? If that's no good, will have a look at the plate - think I may have a short shift kit somewhere so may whack that on while i'm at it.
40mm is a bit excessive. New cable, cable stretched? You may have to pack the adjuster end out with a few washers.
Half a dozen turns of the wingnut will be enough to take up the slack so shouldn't need washers. But if the other gears are ok don't hold your breath.
Try the easy things first . I'd agree that 3rd is an odd gear to have crunchings on, but worth getting the clutch nipped up first.
yeah, trying to be optamistic at the moment - you never know - I thought defo gearbox as its only 3rd gear, but prev owner reckons it was fine until it was left standing for a while then the clutch replaced. will keep you posted.
It sounds like the 3rd synchro, but I'd be checking the linkage alignment/bushes as the garage could have quite likely forced the gearstick about to try and get it in gear, and thus overtwisting it out of alignment.
